"Fifteen thousand Africans are dying each day of preventable, treatable diseases - AIDS, malaria, TB - for lack of drugs that we take for granted.
This statistic alone makes a fool of the idea many of us hold on to very tightly: the idea of equality. What is happening in Africa mocks our piety, doubts our concern and questions our commitment to the whole concept. Because if we're honest, there's no way we could conclude that such mass death day after day would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else. Certainly not in North America or Europe or Japan... Deep down, if we really accept that their lives - African lives - are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. It's an uncomfortable truth."
That was Bono. An uncomfortable truth, to be sure. Then he says this:
"We can be the generation that no longer accepts that an accident of latitude determines whether a child lives or dies - but will we be that generation? Will we in the West realize our potential or will we sleep in the comfort of our affluence with apathy and indifference murmuring softly in our ears?
...This is Africa's crisis. That it's not on the nightly news, that we do not treat this as an emergency - that's our crisis."
Still processing. And praying. God, show us how to help the poor and give us the courage to obey You when you do.
